


Watch the Flames Climb High into the Night

by 221blackandwhitestripes



Series: Gotham Season 5 Fics [4]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Death In Dream, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Episode: s05e03 Penguin Our Hero, Episode: s05e04 Ruin, Explosions, M/M, Not Really Character Death, Random & Short, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-17 23:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17570327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221blackandwhitestripes/pseuds/221blackandwhitestripes
Summary: After Haven explodes, fire climbing the walls, it's clear the city needs all the help it can get. But what would it take to make Oswald Cobblepot care?





	Watch the Flames Climb High into the Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is another short one I started writing after 5x03, but couldn't finish due to a busy schedule, but I have finished it now, so I hope you guys like it.

“Oswald, you have to help get these people _out_ ,” Jim shouted, voice barely heard over the roar of fire emanating from the building.

“I will do no such thing,” Oswald spat, pulling himself from Gordon’s grasp around his wrist. He’d had enough of this mess, this “Police Business”. He'd had a long, hard day. What he really needed was to go home and have a long, warm bath, rest his _leg_ , goddammit, have a cup of ginger tea.

Jim shook his head at him, lip curling back in disgust. He didn’t know the meaning of the word. “What will it take, Oswald, for you to finally _care_?”

“Nothing,” Oswald laughed dryly, the sound forced from his throat. “Because I don’t! And you can’t make me.”

Jim shook his head again. “Fine.”

Oswald watched him go.

“Penguin!” Someone screeched from behind him.

“ _What?_ ” he shouted, turning on his heel. He’d had _enough_ of this, he was so _sick_ -

“Eat this.” Something cold and hard slammed against his face and everything went **black**.

***

Everything felt foggy and grey as if Oswald was walking through clouds of billowing smoke. 

_Where am I?_

“How ‘bout this!” Jim announced his presence, pistol raised. Ever the one to play hero. “Drop the guns and I won’t shoot you.” Oswald could see the cape.

“How the hell did he get free?”

Oswald grinned, watching the back of their puny, little heads closely.

“Don’t matter, he’s bluffin’ again.”

“I am afraid, he’s not.” Oswald stepped forward through the mist, watching the gang members turn around in alarm. With a twist of his lips, he cocked his gun. “Neither am I!” He fired a couple rounds into the men in front of him, lip curling up in satisfaction as he watched them fall.

“Come on out, boys,” Jim called, prompting officers to spill into the room like a burst drainpipe. But never mind them.

“Oswald!”

Oswald looked up, startled by the voice he knew so well.

“Ed?” He gasped out just before the stack of limbs rushed into his arms, capturing him in an embrace. “Ed, what are you doing here?”

“What are you talking about, Oswald?” Ed asked, pulling away slightly to look over him with a puzzled expression, question marks in his eyes. “The others kidnapped me and forced me to come here, remember?”

Oswald blinked. Surely..?

“I remember,” he nodded then laughed. “Sorry, my mind just-”

“It’s okay,” Ed reassured him, a hand on Oswald’s shoulder. “You saved me.”

From behind Ed, someone else piped up. “He saved all of us.”

“He shot the gang leader!”

“Penguin saved all of us!”

Oswald looked around, heart swelling in his chest at the calls of appreciation, the room spinning as he turned this way and that before resettling his focus of Edward once more.

“They love me,” Oswald whispered.

“Of course, they do,” Ed told him warmly, his low, quiet voice somehow rising above the volume of the crowd. “I cannot be bought, but I can be stolen with a glance. I’m worthless to one, but priceless to two.”

Oswald pulled him in and Ed kissed him, and kissed him, and _kissed him_.

“Oswald.”

He was outside now, an officer to his left, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he got down there, only that it had happened.

“Hello, Jim,” Oswald greeted, stood, offered his hand. Jim shook it begrudgingly. Oswald looked around. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Ed got off to, would you?”

“Ed?” Jim’s face was far too blank. “Ed’s upstairs.”

Something twisted in Oswald’s stomach and screeched in his brain.

“You mean he’s in the building?” Oswald turned his face, scanned the windows. He imagined them shrouded in fire, glass shattered, blood dripping down the walls.

“Yes, Ed is in the building.”

No.

“Hi, Pengy,” Barbara’s voice wafted through the air, but it was not the cause of the fear plaguing Oswald’s mind.

“Jim,” he pleaded, turning to face the building fully. Ed was up there.

“Barbara,” Jim warned.

“Bye, Pengy.” The safety clicked off, a warning for something terrible. But instead of a ringing shot, an explosion warped the air, fire crawling up to the sky like vines on an old estate wall. Oswald should have been knocked over, should have been laying on the ground like the others around him. That was how he remembered it.

Instead, he stood, facing the building, vision clouded by smoke. He walked - stumbled - staggered across the courtyard.

“Oswald?” Jim was awake now, it seemed, calling for him.

“Ed is in there,” Oswald yelled back at him, hysteria straining his voice. “Ed is in there.”

He was up the stairs, in the room, a phantom among the dead and unconscious. Blood, food, bullets and bodies crowded the hallways, creating a carpet of their own for Oswald to walk over. There, at the end of the bloodied red carpet, laid Edward, his vivid green suit sticking out like a rose in the desert.

“Ed!” Oswald yelled, but it sounded muffled so he had to say it again. “Ed! Ed! Ed!”

He crawled over the bodies, on his knees now, Lifted Ed’s head onto his lap.

“Ed.” A tear slipped down his cheek, disappeared before it could hit Ed’s face as well. Ed coughed, ribs visibly shaking. “Ed?”

“I thought… I thought you cared about me, Oswald,” Ed said between spitting coughs.

“I do,” Oswald cried, blood leaking from his throat. “I love you.”

“Then why would you let them all die, Oswald?” Ed asked, fury in his eyes all of a sudden, spindly hand dripping Oswald’s cheek too hard. “Why won’t you save them?”

“I- I-” Oswald stammered, head roiling, vision blurry.

_Oswald, are you there?_

“You did this,” Ed spat through his gritted teeth, his eyes gone grey and cold. Slowly, his bony hand went stiff, body turned to ash in Oswald’s hands. Oswald shivered and cried, feeling the residual flames lick his skin, carve out his flesh.

“I’m sorry,” he cried, tried to put the pieces Ed had left behind back together to make him whole again _._ “I’m sorry.”

_Then do something._

***

Oswald awoke, soot-stained tears in his eyes, black running down his cheeks.

“Oswald?” He opened his eyes, looked up at Jim Gordon’s cold, steady gaze. “Oswald, we need your help.”

“Fine,” Oswald gasped, scrabbled to his feet, ignored his twinging leg and aching bones, his thumping head and aching heart. “I will help you.”

Jim frowned for a moment before the corner of his lips lifted in a smile. “Glad to see you care.”

Oswald swallowed. “I could say the same to you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If y'all are wondering, a WIP will be updated on the 30th as that is my birthday and I am excited, lol. Send me birthday wishes here: [Zebrashavestripes](https://zebrashavestripes.tumblr.com/)


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